Steal: Boy/Girl, Kimya Dawson

L.A.'s aptly named duo Boy/Girl hate comparisons to the White Stripes, and it's understandable why: Aside from the gender breakdown of the band, the similarities are few. Sure, the girl (Lisa Cusack) plays drums while the boy (Eric Stiner) sings and plays guitar, but the two prefer to inject throat-ripping vocals and no-wave rhythms into their blues redux, thank you very much. The duo is all intensity, smashing drums and cacophonous guitars.

Kimya Dawson is one of the few nu-folkers left who is not cloying. Her quiet songs are smushed full of words one minute, then lyrically minimal the next, but always riding an edge few others in her genre care to notice. As a result, her songs remain beautiful but startling, leaving you a touch uncomfortable, but in a good way. Spencer, meantime, is a one-man kinda show, usually, but that doesn't stop him from hitting the folk genre hard, then leaving it behind for a strange, lo-fi toe-tapping weirdness. The bizarre angles of both artists are what make them both so transfixing, and, nationally known, they are worth much more than the five bones it'll cost you to get in. -- Jonanna Widner